Sunday, April 29, 2007

Saturday's Family Circus

First, no, Jeff Keane, this is not a joke. It's not funny, it's not cute, it's not even mildly amusing. I don't know what the technical requirements are to be a joke, but this definitely doesn't count. D-

Second, I always assumed the Keanes were Protestant. Hm. You learn something new every day.

Third, now that I got those first two out of the way, what this really reminds me of is the Christian homodevotionalism described in Mark Jordan's Silence of Sodom:

The most important theological facts about Catholicism and homosexuality are not the bureaucratic words that Catholic authorities speak. The truly significant facts concern the homosexuality of the Catholic Church itself – of members of its priesthood and its clerical culture, of its rituals and spiritual traditions.

He goes on to describe how the camp, the outlet for sexual repression in devotion to Christ, and the homosex living conditions of the priesthood attract a whole lot of gays into the priesthood.

Eve Sedgwick in The Epistemology of the Closet says this of gay boys and their relationship to the Church:

Catholicism in particular is famous for giving countless gay and proto-gay children the shock of possibility of adults who don't marry, of men in dresses, of passionate theatre, of introspecive investment of lives filled with what could, ideally without diminution, be called the work of fetish.

So here we have a boy, who by all indications is gay, on one knee talking to Jesus. He's taking a culturally ubiquitous symbol of marriage proposal and is now applying it to Jesus. Robert Goss in Queering Christ says:

Theological traditions originating in the Deutero-Pauline letter to the Ephesians identify the church as the "bride of Christ." [...] For centuries, Catholic priests have been encouraged and formed to seek an erotic comsummation as brides of Christ, as in the Song of Songs: "Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth" (Song of Songs 1:1). Priests in training were formed spiritually and encouraged to see themselves as "brides," to be penetrated and kissed by the bride-groom.

And as Jeffy attempts to marry Christ in the way he's seen other men attempt to marry, which I guess is cute and might be considered a nice little joke here, Dolly has walked in on him. Look how shocked Jeffy is. Poor kid! He's been caught and Dolly doesn't even let him get off his one knee before she's goes to tell on him!